Koi Hak Chao, and our night in the cave...

Koi Hak Chao(KHC) is a 6 pitch (5 really), sport multi-pitch, just outside of VV. Check out the new topo on Green Climbers Home's website for directions. This, is just the beginning of your adventure....take heed of the advice of a machete, this would've made things a hell of a lot easier! Also, wear boots and prepare to get them a little dirty...I wore thongs so my feet can vouch for that directly. Leave at 6 in the morning, or earlier, and do not underestimate the pace at which it gets dark. Carry a headlight with you on the climbin case you have to rappel in the dark, it's a tricky decent. And lastly, be prepared to spend the night, just in case things go wrong. We did this in the wet season so things might be a bit different for you. After you get to the irrigation channel which flows out of the cave, cross over, and follow what trail there may be, left. You need to go left though. You will start your accent through the 'Knives of Death', a.k.a. 'sharp slippery rocks', when you are still right of the wall. Not sure if they're there all the time but if you come across a line of home made log traps, follow them up towards the slanting wall and that's the start of your accent....Have fun!
My Story;
I thought I would tell this in addition to the other climbing around here because it's an adventure in it's own...We started off at 7.30, a respectable time we thought, how hard can this thing be to find. Firstly, there was no bridge (wet season) so we crossed on the piece of wood held together with some tacks that had more water than wood in it called a boat. 1000kip, worth the risk. The hike started really well and we were excited with our progress! We'd made it to the irrigation channel without any real change of direction (only came to 3 dead ends). This is where our luck ended....turns out we crossed the start of the accent, Riley even had a closer look at it and decided it was too dense so dismissed it, 3 times. Eventually I said, 'maybe I'll just check up here again'. At this point we hadn't a clue where the hell we were! We had gone and bashed through the jungle multiple times only to be confronted by intense foliage or a concealed rock. KHC was teasing us, looming over watching us squirm. So we found the entrance to the rocks of death and started our accent...it was painstakingly slow, especially in thongs. God why did I wear thongs! One false move on this stuff and you'd lose a foot, I'm surprised no one got hurt.

The view from the top

The climb was great, finally started climbing at 11:30! Little wet but worth the hike in. Beautiful warm-up pitches and a tricky crux traverse that was just a dream to climb up onto a nice fingery finish. We had to rush the last pitch as it was getting dark, fast! We had 5 people, so one group of 2; Chris and Samson, and one group of 3; Riley, Fabian and myself. By the time we were at the 2nd last pitch C and S had already descended the tricky back clipping rappel and headed to the bar to wait for us...this is when it all went downhill. We underestimated how much time we had but luckily I had thought ahead enough to climb with my pack. It was slow going with 3, especially teaching Fabian how to do a couple of the technical things involving back clipping and prusiking etc and the fact we had to deal with 2 ropes. We ended up rappelling the last few pitches with my headlamp and a dodgy torch across the toughest rappel I've done...we were a little worried. Once we were on the ground and pulling the ropes through we struck disaster, the knot was stuck up in a tree up the wall! Luckily I had a surge of adrenaline and managed to pull it free, along with the tree, and we packed up and started heading down the rocks of death! If I hadn't have taken my bag up, containing my 2 torches we would've been up shit creek! It was unusually dark that night, couldn't see your hand in front of your face!

crossing over

I don't know how we got as far as we did, I was leading us by pure fluke I think. Two headlamps and a dodgy torch did flip all to show us where we were in the jungle covered rocks. These rocks were also soaking wet, if they weren't so sharp this would've been an issue. So eventually I got to a point where I had no idea where we were, it was a little scary but we all held our nerve really well. So we decided to go back to the pissy little cave, more of an overhanging rock, that we passed and camp the night. It wasn't going to be 5 star but it was dry. So we set up camp, tried to kill the huge arse spiders who called it home, moved some rocks around, rationed our food and water then bid the day farewell. It wasn't that bad, we got a little bit of sleep, had some spiders tried to wrap me up (I woke up with cobwebs over my face) and it wasn't that cold.

Sharing....

My rock bed

We woke at the crack of dawn, dished out breakfast, an apple, 2 bananas, half a sandwhich and some peanut butter then finished our decent. Turns out we camped right next to the trail! I wasn't far off after all. Lucky we didn't keep going though because, in our haste to pack up, Riley left his climbing shoes behind and I left my towel...I couldn't see us going through all that again to get them back haha We still spent an hour and a half finding our way out, getting lost a few times, dealing with hunger and thirst and trying not to let the constant stinging of all the cuts and scratches we'd acquired along the way bother us. We made it back to the crappy boat to be greeted by Samson and Chris, just about to mount their search for us. Thanks Guys!! We were glad to be back!

Nearly home

Overall I'd say it went pretty well, did wonders for my budget haha If someone came up to me and said 'I know of this multi pitch, you have to hack through dense jungle, scramble up rocks of death, get lost multiple times, to climb on a pretty wet route only then to make a hard technical rappel down in the dark, scramble halfway down the rocks of death only to get lost again, ration your food and water, sleep in an uncomfortable cave overnight with giant spiders and cricket things that could take your toe off, then scramble all the way back in the morning hungry and thirsty' I would've told him to ''go over to that corner there and quietly f*!$ yourself''....but, it made three boys into men and I stand here today a ne......sorry I can't keep that up haha It was truly an adventure and wouldn't take it back for anything. None of us lost our shit or tried to kill each other and we were in high spirits most of the time, What A Day! To Riley and Fabian, it was a pleasure to do some general adventuring with you, I'll never forget it!

As for the rest of the climbing, I will put together all my best photos and write a great post on Climbing in Vang Vieng and Nha Pha Daeng. I'm having an amazing time here!!

One of the walls of Nha Pha Daeng